THE WILLIES
The set is comprised of a bed with blue linens, perched on its foot, facing the audience; when Magnus “reclines” on it she’s really standing. To the left of the bed is a bat, which she uses in one section, and three old-fashioned windows hang artfully in the air. Scott Turner’s lighting design is magnificently subtle: when the lights come up, they often shine through the engraved opaque glass of these windows, appearing at times like the moon, a streetlight, or a lamp, as though someone indoors had turned on a light and we stood outside gazing in, voyeurs. At one point Magnus speaks to us in silhouette. And at the very end, when she and Joe Huppert sing a wonderful lullaby he wrote, the stage is in darkness. Throughout, the contrasts of light and dark are used to maximum effect. Magnus’s costume–a loose-fitting black satin top with an open collar and black wide-legged bottoms–works both as unisex pajamas and as a matronly hostess outfit.
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“Eureka” and “Cruise Control,” on the other hand, need further development. In “Eureka” Magnus is a Gene Hackman fan who writes to him about her experience of epiphany once she realized everyone in the world was dead. This familiar concept (recently explored by the mystic Georges Gurdjieff, as well as by Don Juan of the Carlos Castenada series) needs more than the slapstick delivery she gives it, which inhibits the audience from entering the consciousness of the character. Here Magnus is shrill and superficial in a way that’s almost wholly uncharacteristic of her care at other points. More coloration and shading are needed, and could be easily attained partly by dropping the high voice she uses to accentuate the character’s manic state. The writing is good, but Magnus falters when she goes for easy laughs at the end.
